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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7973612" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think this is highly relevant to the issue of how fantasy relaxes the constraints on permissible violence. But getting into it does require a bit more philsophising!I think that many (certainly not all) contemporary people would affirm that taking a life is an evil, and even when justified - eg in self-defence - it is a necessary evil.But I don't think that fantasy adopts such a conception. For instance, once we allow for the permissibility of retributive violence - which JRRT does in LotR (as Gandalf tells Frodo, there are many who live but deserve death) - then some takings of life, namely, those which are the infliction of just punishment, are not evils.Also, read JRRT's account of Eomer in the Battle of the Pelennor FIeld - Eomer comes under a battle-lust and a death-wish. Had he died, I don't think that would have been an evil. And had that death been an honourable killing eg by a Southron soldier, that would have been a sad thing but not an evil act.Fantasy - if its standard tropes are to be upheld - needs these notions around honour and punishment that allow for some killings not to be evils. They might be regrettable in the sense that the world would be a better place with Eomer still in it, but that's a different matter.You can also see that JRRT is very hostile to suicide. This is connected to broader ideas about the role of life and death in the scheme of the universe, which are different from some contemporary people's ideas but also help explain why not all death is an evil.</blockquote>

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